Reisman: Corruption can sometimes be legal

Mar. 29, 2012

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Corruption is rotten and needs to be rooted out of government, but it isn’t always criminal.

And that is what drives honest, taxpaying citizens crazy — they wonder how greed-driven officials can wrongfully gorge at the public trough without fear of penalty. They ask: How come these nickel-and-dime chiselers get away with it?

The reason is simple. Corruption is sociopathically built into the system. It’s in the loopholes and the fine print; it’s buried in the footnotes and below the asterisks where suspect exceptions to every rule are written with invisible ink. A corrupt act may be immoral, but not necessarily illegal.

Nice the way that works.

There is a phenomenon in politics I call the “Weasel Zone.” This is the transition period between Election Day and the first of the new year when nobody is paying close attention to the last-minute shenanigans of the people who are being shown the door. Corruption thrives in the “Weasel Zone.”

If you predict I am leading up to Yonkers, give yourself a cigar because I am.

It was recently revealed in this newspaper and elsewhere that in early January the city’s former Deputy Mayor William Regan received a final paycheck that included an additional $32,000 in unused vacation and sick time, or about five times the payout Regan ordinarily would have gotten.

This was the result of a slick maneuver which smelled but was perfectly legal.

How was it pulled off? Let’s step into the “Weasel Zone” and examine the final days of two-term Mayor Phil Amicone’s administration.

The job of deputy mayor pays a salary of $163,332 a year, an amount that Regan, a longtime public servant, received up until Aug. 11, 2010, when he “retired.” The very next day Amicone rehired him.

This allowed Regan to double dip, a common practice. Under this arrangement, he could collect his $109,509-a-year pension and an annual salary of $29,999 — the maximum amount allowed by the state for double dipping without having to secure a waiver.

But there’s a loophole in the Civil Service law. The $29,999 cap applies only to employees under the age of 65. If a double dipper turns 65 after Jan. 1 of any given calendar year, then he or she is exempted from the salary cap.

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So here’s what happened. On Dec. 28, 2011, just a few business days before the newly elected Mayor Mike Spano took office, Amicone’s chief of staff Lisa Mrijaj authorized an 11th-hour pay increase for Regan from the requisite $29,999 to the standard annual rate of $163,332.

Why was this possible? Go back to the aforementioned loophole. Because Regan turns 65 in September, he was exempted from that pesky salary cap. So the cap was lifted on Jan. 1, 2012.

Regan continued to work through Jan. 5 at the higher rate of pay when he was terminated by the Spano administration.

The result was a fat, final paycheck of $40,200 (including the unused sick and vacation time), or about $32,000 more than he would’ve gotten. It amounted to a phantom bonus and it took a lot of thinking to pull off.

It appears that the Spano administration only recently found out about the scheme, which gives credence to the mayor’s alarming claim that he wasn’t aware of all the fiscal nuttiness going on until after he took office. Heads are said to be rolling at City Hall over this, as Spano struggles with the city’s image, which has suffered under a barrage of headlines about the Ridge Hill bribery trial involving a former Yonkers city councilwoman and the travails of his own brother, Nick Spano, the former state senator who pleaded guilty to income tax fraud.

Last week, Deputy Mayor Susan Gerry wrote a letter in which she demanded that Regan give the money back because the last-minute salary boost “would appear to contravene, in spirit, if not in fact,” the prohibition of taking a pension and a salary in excess of $30,000.

Regan was incensed, calling Gerry’s letter a “hatchet job” that was meant to discredit him. He said that by serving the city at a reduced salary for 16 months he actually saved taxpayers $103,000, which is true.

What he didn’t mention, however, was that his original reason for taking a one-day retirement wasn’t out of charity to the city but in the interest of his family. At the time he told The Journal News that a car accident in which he could’ve been killed made him think about his family’s well being.

“If I died while still active, my wife only gets a lump sum, so I’m protecting her,” Regan said in 2010.

One other thing. In his other role as chairman of the city’s Parking Authority, Regan a month ago gave Mrijaj a soft post-Amicone landing when he signed her to a four-year, $140,000-a-year contract to be the authority’s executive director.

So then she gives Regan a raise. This is known as mutual back-scratching.